No, I’m not kidding – an excellent article on the subject of Detroit and the prospects of urban innovation in such dying cities. Especially fascinating are the pictures of “de-urbanization” over the past decades: areas of Detroit once fully urbanized are now nearly vacant – and not just of people, but of buildings. As the author points out, this opens up the prospect of all sorts of urban experimentation.
There are places all over our large, decaying cities just like that – places which have become the arena for rebuilding America. Now, to be sure, lots of these places have corrupt, liberal governments addicted to taxes and regulation (its why they’re blighted, after all), but the time will come when even the most obtuse tax-and-regulate liberal will have to see that the jig is up. Right now, you can buy a house in Detroit for about 2 grand – of course, given that the place is pretty crime ridden and has a shrinking employer base, its not such a good idea at the moment. But it can be made different.
If we can provide incentives for people to start or expand businesses (land is cheap in Detroit and jobs are scarce); if we can break out of the mindset that if its urban it must stay that way (why not put a strip a half mile wide between Detroit and any neighboring community and restore it to forest and farm land?); if we genuinely think anew and act anew, we can restore our cities – not, hopefully, to the soul less, concrete megalopolis of the past, but to places where human beings can live and work.
This is a very exciting time to live in – mindset which seized upon our nation in the 30’s are at last breaking down completely, and we now have a chance to re-forge the America our grandfathers knew, and our Founders intended.
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